


The Wonderful, Excellent, Not Bad, Very Good Fitzsimmons Betting Pool

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Playground Team, The Team - Freeform, bus team, fitzsimmons betting pool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anon asked for a drabble about the fabled Fitzsimmons betting pool and it kind of became a whole thing. Skye organizes it, the whole team gets into it, it becomes kind of a touchstone through the years... :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wonderful, Excellent, Not Bad, Very Good Fitzsimmons Betting Pool

“Starting bet’s $10 and kisses are wild,” Skye announced, spreading her thorough diagram across the holotable.

“You’ve never played poker, have you?” Ward muttered.

She ignored him.

“What did you want to meet about?” Coulson asked as he hurried in. “And where are Fitzsimmons?”

“I sent them on a goose chase." Skye waved her hand, the details irrelevant. “We’re starting a betting pool on when they’re getting together.”

“Wait -- they’re... not already together?” Ward said slowly.

Skye, May, and Coulson exchanged incredulous looks.

“Maybe they should revoke your badge, superspy,” Skye chuckled.

“You think there aren’t already people betting on this?” May flipped Skye’s chart around so she could read the rules and trace the flow chart of possible scenarios. “The jackpots at SciOps were legendary.”

“Well, not all of us worked at SciOps,” Skye protested. “Or went to the Academy. So let’s start a little something of our own, just our team. What do you say?” she finished eagerly, looking around at them all.

Her excitement was infectious, and though she couldn’t have chosen three people more likely to disapprove of what she was proposing, everyone finally agreed.

“Here’s how I figure it’ll work,” she rushed on. “To be part of the pool, you pay a monthly due -- to yours truly -- until they’ve had babies or until you choose to drop out of the running.”

“Babies aren’t end-game for everyone,” Coulson reminded her, and May shifted slightly, frowning at the table.

“True, but if you don’t think Fitzsimmons are gonna be popping them out someday, you’re doomed to lose, my friend.” Skye caught his expression and muttered, “I mean, my superior.”

“We’ll use babies as the final point for now and readjust as necessary,” Ward pronounced.

“Fine. As you can see I’ve listed the major points in their trajectory: first kiss, first date, first bow-chicka-wow-wow, love confession, engagement, marriage, babies. I don’t think any of us doubt that these  _ will  _ all happen, so it’s more a question of  _ when  _ and in what order. For now, write down the general timeline you expect. Specify the order, as that’ll be one way to win. You could do babies first and then first kiss, if you’re a risk-taker.” Ward glanced at her and she sighed. “I know that’s not how it works, okay guys? Second way to win is based on how long these things take to happen. Like, after their first kiss, how long does it take them to go on their first date, blah blah blah.”

Coulson glanced up from where he’d already begun filling out his entry card. “This seems unnecessarily complicated.”

“And you’re just going to hold on to our money and  _ not _ go use it to buy a new van?” Ward asked suspiciously.

“You -- rude,” she scolded, pointing her finger at him. “And chill, AC, I got this. It’s like how you have a total bracket for March Madness and then can adjust your choices as games happen.”

“You can’t adjust your choices,” Coulson and May said at the same time.

“Oh, really? Don’t care. Fill out the card.”   
  
  


 

For a long time nothing happened. Every now and then one team member or another would try to prod, to provoke, to catalyze, but Fitz and Simmons seemed set on ignoring what seemed obvious to everyone else.

And then everything went to shit, and Ward’s name was removed from the roster (though his money was not). Skye wanted to stop the pool but Coulson told her privately he thought it was important to have something positive to focus on, and for now, if all they had was hoping for a hypothetical-maybe-someday relationship between their two bickering scientists, then they should focus on that.

May was the first person to collect. Jemma let slip to Skye what Fitz had said in the pod, and though it felt a bit dirty to be settling debts when Fitz could barely speak and Jemma was constantly on the verge of tears, May was the only one who’d bet on a love confession preceding any other step in their relationship.

Again when Jemma went undercover at Hydra, Skye thought about ceasing the monthly dues collections. She saw the way Fitz crumpled with Jemma gone. She heard the way he said her name, with a breathlessness and hopelessness that had never been there before. But May stopped her when she tried to throw out the entry cards.

“It’s not over,” May murmured, pushing them back to Skye.

“What’s not? The betting? Do you really think this should be our priority--”

“No,  _ they’re _ not over.” May jerked her chin towards where Fitz was puttering in the garage, sealing and unsealing the same jar of bolts over and over again. “Their story is bigger than that.”

“Didn’t know you were such a romantic,” Skye grinned.

“We all need a victory, okay?” May muttered before she stalked off.

It became an initiation rite of sorts for every new member of the team. A few days after joining S.H.I.E.L.D., they would be visited by Skye, who would patiently explain the parameters, the standings, the requirements. As their ranks swelled, so too did the stakes of the Fitzsimmons Gambling Ring.

“I’m not gonna be a part of that nonsense,” Mack sighed when Skye was done with her spiel.

“May’s part of it.  _ Coulson’s _ part of it,” Skye prodded.

“All I’ve heard of Jemma so far is through Fitz, and it’s not flattering. I don’t know how you guys think there’s still hope for them--”

“Fitz is wounded, but they’ll recover.” He still looked skeptical so she pressed on, “If there’s one thing I have faith in in this world, it’s Fitzsimmons, and that they’ll always find a way back to each other.”

“You obviously weren’t raised in a religious household,” Mack chuckled.

“Oh, my dear Mack, even worse, I was raised by  _ nuns _ . If that doesn’t kick the faith out of you--”

“I’m sorry, Skye, I can’t bet on this.”

“You can’t sit with us if you don’t,” she threatened. “I’m serious. I’ll always tie up the game console when you want to use it and I’ll eat your power bars and I’ll break all the equipment in the weight room--”

“Girl, chill!” he exclaimed, snatching the papers from her. “If it means that much to you...”

Hunter presented much less of a challenge.    


“Putting all my money on sex same day as first kiss,” he explained when he returned his completed entry card to Skye. “From what I hear of Jemma, she’s a feisty one.”

Skye rolled her eyes but pocketed his money.

Several months later, when Fitz nervously asked Mack for restaurant recommendations, he gleefully called the pool participants together and collected the resultant prize.

He returned it a week later, when there was still no news on Jemma’s whereabouts.

During her six months absence, Skye -- now Daisy -- through for a third time about ending the betting pool. She stopped collecting dues, because this time -- this time there was no bright spot. There was no hope. Fitzsimmons had become the very thing from which the team needed a distraction. Rather than focus on the scientists the team did everything in their power to find something that would make Jemma’s absence feel like less of a gaping hole and and that would make Fitz’s repeated disappearances hurt less.

But this time, it was Bobbi who came to Daisy.

“Keep going,” she said without preamble.

Daisy looked at the pasta she’d been shovelling into her mouth between missions and then back up at Bobbi. “Sorry?”

“The pool. The Fitzsimmons bet. Keep going. I need it. We  _ all  _ need it.” Bobbi glanced away with uncharacteristically raw emotion rippling across her face. “We could all use it as a reminder to not give up.”

“So the only way to get everyone to support Fitz in his quest is to make them literally invest money in it?” Daisy said slowly.

“No, of course not, just... People around here have forgotten that we used to root for them, as a team. We all believed that nothing would stand in the way of them being together. We can believe that again.” She tapped the kitchen table lightly and drifted away, back to the lab, where -- Daisy was sure -- she would be analyzing something for Fitz.   
  
  
  


When Fitz brought Jemma home, Daisy took $30 from the jackpot to buy everyone a round of drinks. She didn’t think anyone would mind.

The long-awaited first kiss didn’t happen at all when or how the gamblers expected it to, but they all saw the security feed from the lab and had to admit that whatever the circumstances, that was definitely a first kiss, space boyfriend be damned.

“You’re sure they don’t come back in a few minutes and get down and dirty on one of the lab benches?” Hunter asked sadly.

Daisy readjusted everyone’s predictions based on the timing of the kiss: from here on in, it would be a matter of how closely other milestones followed.

But  _ damn  _ did those two kids have some restraint. Even Lincoln, who’d passed on participation because he wasn’t technically in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s employ, started trying to give them alone time to speed things up. (He  _ might  _ have been trying to help his favorite Inhuman win the pool, but no one said he had to be impartial.)

“Shame no one put money on hand-holding,” Coulson noted when Daisy had her vision of Fitzsimmons in the snow.

“At this rate I’ll be dead before they get married,” May growled.

“She’s just mad because her timeline’s entirely defunct by this point,” Daisy explained cheerily to Coulson as May stormed away, as much as May ever stormed.

And if Mack  _ did  _ push them a bit, with the costumes and the antagonistic comments about scientists and his little pep talk with Jemma and the convenient timing of his departure to the Quinjet... Well, as Fitz had said, things would happen as they happened. He wasn’t manipulating the timeline, just... leaving it open. They might’ve had sex in Bucharest anyway.

But he had money riding on it, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

The fabled, much-beloved Fitzsimmons Betting Pool came to its appropriate conclusion on their wedding day, when Daisy presented them with the deed to a cottage in Perthshire. 

“I found it in your search history,” she said to Fitz as the newlyweds just gaped at her. “Figured we could help with that.”

“But...how?” Jemma gasped. “It must’ve cost--”

“We all chipped in, in a way,” Mack chuckled, and he, Bobbi, Hunter, Coulson, and May stepped up behind Daisy, all sporting near-identical smug smirks.

“We had a bit of a bet going on you two,” Daisy explained.

“On when you’d kiss, when you’d hook up, that kind of thing,” Bobbi added.

“But we all underestimated how quickly you’d want to tie the knot after you finally got together,” Coulson chimed in.

“So we thought we’d put the money towards something for the two of you,” Daisy finished, fairly bouncing with excitement at this point.

“That’s... that’s...” Fitz spluttered, looking back at the deed, at his future home that he’d be sharing with his best friend and wife. “That’s very k-”

“You were  _ betting  _ on us?” Jemma screeched.

“Too soon,” Hunter muttered to Mack, and they hurried away to the open bar. 


End file.
